


it’s thinking of love (it’s thinking of stabbing us to death)

by scorpiod



Category: Sharp Objects (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Blood, Bloodplay, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Child Murder, Cunnilingus, Dubious Consent, F/F, Guilt, Implied Munchausen by Proxy, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Incest, Mild Gore, Murder, Possessive Behavior, Scars, Serial Killing, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:21:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24582232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod
Summary: “I knew it," Amma says, eyes glittering, as she leans in and plants a kiss on Camille’s lips, “I knew you were like me.”In which Camille has killed her fair share of girls.
Relationships: Amma Crellin/Camille Preaker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	it’s thinking of love (it’s thinking of stabbing us to death)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [summerdayghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/gifts).



It’s been a long time since Camille killed anyone. 

  
  


*

  
  


Before she goes to Wind Gap again, Camille gets drunk. 

This is not new, but it hits hard this time, the burn of alcohol, going from low level buzzed like she is on the regular, to truly out of her mind, like she’s trying to purge something out herself. Like she is trying to kill something inside her. 

Wind Gap fills her with fear, a fight or flight response. _Something terrible is going to happen_ screams inside her, like the words carved on her skin.

Camille wakes up in a field, eyes staring up at the sky, head throbbing in a way it hasn’t in a long time, back aching, bones creaking with age. The sun isn’t out yet, but the sky is a light shade of blue, and there are birds pleasantly chirping in nature. She is grounded now, hyper aware of the grass beneath her, the dirt under her nails, the soft sounds around her.

It’s almost peaceful. 

If she stays right here, lets the ground take her, lets the earth swallow her whole, maybe nothing bad will happen.

  
  


*

  
  


The last time Camille killed someone, she was eighteen and on her way out of town. 

Betty was Camille’s pretty little cheerleader friend—”friend,” in air quotes, because no one is really her friend. Camille had barriers wrapped around her body and heart, making herself untouchable since Marian died. No one can quite reach out to her; her mother said she has a cold nature, a cold heart, and that makes her hard to love _._

Camille then thought, and Camille now thinks, _I’ll show you hard to love_.

Betty _was_ really pretty, though. She has unblemished skin and haysilk blonde hair and a pretty smile for cheerleading practice. She was always a bitch, but then again, so was Camille. 

Betty got nailed, hands first, held up in defense, then got hit with a hammer to the face. It used to be exciting, to watch a person’s skull pulp and splatter all over; the first time she did it, her heart raced and throbbed in her chest and it spread warmth all over her, down from her spine to her legs to her cunt. It felt like coming alive, as if one small death could fuel her, but now it was just old hat. 

Blood went everywhere, on Camille’s face, on her hands, blood in her mouth; it didn’t taste like anything but copper and iron. It didn’t make her feel anything. There was no clarity in death, just a bigger wider hole inside where her heart was supposed to exist, growing wider and wider each day since Marian died.

And just like that, it was all over. 

Camille was _cured,_ so to speak. 

Camille left her body for the forest scavengers; the animals would take care of poor Betty, the way they did for every other girl Camille left in the woods as an offering.

She left town the next day, and Camille never quite found something to fill her up the way she wanted, the way the blood and death rattle gasps of other girls did, except for the sharp, warm loving touch of her own knives. 

  
  


*

  
  


Camille has quit knives cold turkey these days.

Every word on her body throbs with the longing for it—the sharp burst of pain, the frenzied words carved on to herself, or the steady slow way she’d drag a blade across whatever bit of exposed skin she could find—Camille misses these rituals.

Without it, all that’s left is alcohol, as if the burn down her throat can in any way offer some form of recompense, but Camille and her vices are married to each other, forever intertwined. She needs them.

Without the alcohol, her hands shake. Without the blade in her skin, her body aches for something a little more visceral to sink her teeth in. 

H A R L O T burns around mid thigh. It was never really true, but the word felt right. All these words for a desperate lonely woman, and Camille can never get the right ones out of her head and onto her canvass. 

Now in her thirties, Camille no longer wants to be _unlovable_. Now, Camille is home again, and every raw wound that never healed is splitting wide open. 

She wants to carve her heart out and deposit it on her mom’s bed— _here, look what I’ve done for you, will you love me now_?—but her mother has seen her bleed for her and Adora just finds it distasteful. 

Adora with her house built on pain and suffering, never liked to be reminded of it. 

  
  


*

  
  


With all the little boys and girls inside, Wind Gap feels like a ghost town, except for a trio of fearless girls, with wild smiles and free flowing hair in the wind, skating around her and around town. 

“You girls shouldn’t be here,” she tells them. _Don’t you know there’s a serial killer on the loose_? Something about them makes Camille’s heart ache. 

She envies being that free, Wind Gap a playground rather than suffocatingly small. Remembers skating around with Marian’s fingertips brushing against her. Then by herself on this long stretch of road, thinking of her dead sister and stabbing someone to death. The before and after. 

These girls don’t look like sisters.

The youngest looking one—with blond hair and too-short shorts and blue eyes like the sky—looks like the kind of girl Camille would have killed once.

Camille has no need to kill girls anymore, but once she thinks about it, it won’t go away—the thought of this pretty rollerskate girl, a knife in the heart, her bright shining eyes going dull; she almost starts crying.

“We’re not scared,” the blonde one laughs, looking back at her two little friends. “Right?”

“The serial killer will have to catch us first!” The brunette laughs, doing an impressive twirl in her skates. 

“It’s three against one!” Rollerskate Girl, Rollerskate Blondie replies, her mouth curving into a careless smirk. She skates closer to Camille, eyeing her with interest, and for a horrifying moment, Camille wonders if she’s been caught. 

“You’re that reporter, right? Are you going to interview us?” 

The girl in the rollerskates makes Camille’s skin and throb with renewed interest. Words like _CHERRY_ and _HONEY_. Terrible, awful things Camille has no right thinking about a child. 

“Maybe later,” Camille says and walks away from the girls, hand shaking for a cigarette. 

Inside Camille, there's still a predator, waiting for the next move. As a teenager, a girl the same age as the one before her, Camille was a terror, a mean streak more than a mile wide, and a perchance for scissors and hammers.

Tonight, she goes straight to the bar and drinks and drinks until the only burn she can feel is her throat screaming at her, and tries not to think of the girl in the rollerskates. 

Camille tries not to think of killing. 

The words pulse and throb against her skin

BITCH

WHORE

NASTY

All sorts of awful names for herself, but never the truth. Never the right word to spell it all out. 

Never _K I L L E R._ That stays off her skin. 

Camille is a coward, at the end of the day. She's not confessing. 

  
  


*

  
  


Camille dreams about the girl in the rollerskates, her carefree laughter, rolling over her skin, as she stabs her, until Camille is covered in her blood and she slips into the dead girl’s skin, still laughing at her. 

She wakes up in her car, her body curled up painfully in the seat, the sun burning her face above her and nails digging into her palm until there are marks, half moon crescents. 

She throws up as she opens the car door, trying to purge the bad thoughts out of her mind. Her hands ache for something sharper, some other form of self destruction, pushing her urges inward instead of out. 

Stomach clenching around emptiness, Camille drives home. Mama is waiting.

  
  


*

Mama has a way of looking at Camille, like she can see every dirty disappointing thing about her, written on her skin (and she has—stripped Camille naked and cried about how she’s _ruined_ her body, ruined herself, looking at all the words on Camille’s outside in disgust) about her. Sometimes, Camille wants to ask _do you know? Do you know what I’ve done?_ But she can never bear to hear the answer. 

“Camille,” she says, floating away to another room, like a pale pastel ghost, still drinking wine, “why must you only come home when it’s something to do with some ghastly crime?”

Camille doesn’t bother to correct her, about how she doesn’t come home, period, and this is the first time she’s been here for a crime, officially. It doesn’t matter. She’s right. Camille is a ghastly crime, always has been. 

She turns the corner on her way to her room and out pops the blond girl from the town square. It takes a moment to recognize her, because she’s wearing a doll’s clothes, a beautiful embroidered green and white dress, hair in ribbons, and much younger than last time and _—oh_. 

Rollerskate Blondie is Camille's other sister.

Oh dear. 

“Amma,” Camille breathes, the knowledge hitting her with the full force of every hangover Camille has ever had, and she almost pukes again. The doll-like girl before her bursts into a very undoll-like laughter, before she clasps her hand over her mouth, eyes still twinkling mischievously. 

Camille has not seen Amma in ages, since she was a baby and she watched her mom take a bite out of her, just to cry when Amma cried. 

Amma pouts. “I can’t believe you forgot about me,” she says, exaggerated baby doll tone in her voice. 

“Mama doesn’t send me a Christmas card,” Camille says. Lowering her voice, she adds, “she thinks I’m a bad influence.” 

That makes Amma giggle, eyes lighting up. Amma is dressed like a child, florals and paisleys, hair all done up. Doll little girl. _Like Marian._ Dead little girl. She can see bits and pieces of Marian, all in Amma, like Galatea sculpted from the clay, like a replacement golem. _Here is the parts of her I managed to keep._

Camille is hated, but how terrible it must be, to know you’re a replacement. Camille shudders. She doesn’t like to think of her dead little sister. Marian was from _before_ —before Camille turned herself into a monster.

Amma leans in, deceptively sweet. “Mama says you’re _incorrigible_ ,” she whispers, softly, leaning in so the words are said into her skin, intimate and over heated— _don’t tell mama,_ at the tip of her lips. “But so am I.” 

Two sisters sharing secrets. That’s what they do, right? Cool lemonade and roller skating down a road, and no murder and knives and scars in sight. 

Camille tries not to think about Amma, as she goes to her room, tries to keep her baby sister locked up in a corner of her mind and nowhere else. 

Camille, long after, can feel Amma’s breath on her ear, trickling down her throat. 

She flops and lies down on the bed, bedsheets hot yet uncomfortably sticky. The fan blows hard in a corner, wafting cool air into the room (because Adora would never tear up her beautiful old house to add in central air; everyone else can just _suffer_ for her), but it does nothing for Camille.

She is hot, all over, neck and chest and belly and cunt, thinking about Amma. 

Amma (named for Adora, named for _mama,_ because everything of Adora was a reflecting, refracting broken image) was her little sister, Mama’s Marian replacement. She’s grown up since last time. 

(no she hasn’t; she’s still a child; _there’s something wrong with me,_ Camille thinks)

Amma was cute with her turned up nose and glittering eyes, and exactly the kind of girl Camille would have murdered, back in the day. 

_FILTH_ flares up on her chest, burning hard. Camille’s clothes are too heavy, suffocating, and her body moves before she can think, sliding her shirt off her, then pants off, down to her underwear. She doesn't think about splitting Amma’s pretty head open. She does not think about her mouth, so close to hers. She doesn’t think about putting her fingers inside Amma’s mouth until she chokes.

Camille bites down on her lip until she bleeds; it’s a mistake. Now she’s horny and bleeding and her cunt is throbbing and Camille is not going to touch herself to thoughts of her little sister, not to thoughts of killing her sister. 

These are bad, predator thoughts she’s chased away long ago. No good person thinks this about her sister. Now she only hurts herself. 

_Intrusive thoughts,_ a therapist once said. They were right, she thinks, but she could never tell the therapist everything. _It doesn’t define you_.

Maybe, if all Camille ever did with her thoughts is let them run through her brain, her therapist would be right. 

It’s sweltering hot in this old house. Camille is gonna crawl straight out of her skin. She grabs her Evian bottle of vodka and drinks until she drowns all thoughts. 

That’s better. Dead inside numbness still works for her all these years. 

(on her belly, SISTER burns)

  
  


*

  
  


“I could never love you,” Adora says. It’s a shot to the heart. The next words tell her more. “It’s that cold nature of yours...your father had it too. But you know why, dear, don’t you?” 

Adora’s tone is casual and wine-heavy; she says it like she says anything else—you _smell_ ripe, little girl. Camille always thought that meant, _I can smell your blood. I can smell your cunt._ _Put that away._ Mama knows her too well. 

( _you look like a ripe cherry_ )

In 8th grade, Camille grabbed her school scissors and stabbed her classmate Gretchen, for no reason other than she could, because she was angry, because Marian was dead. She dragged her body in the woods and left her there to be found. 

Gretchen _looked_ like Marian, soft and fragile and innocent. Camille couldn't stand the sight of it. 

It was easy. She always wondered if her mother knew. 

Still, even here, even now, she can’t make herself ask _do you know what I am?_

Camille storms out of the house, crying tears she has no right to. She thinks of her mother, her eyebrow plucking, her eyelashes and the red of her bare eyelids, all swollen, her cheeks pink. 

She thinks of Amma’s plush mouth, hovering over her ear and shivers. 

  
  


*

  
  


Camille has a dream of eating a plump ripe cherry, chewing and chewing until the juices run down her mouth and down her body and explode between her teeth.

When she wakes up, Marian is watching her from the corner of her room. 

“Go away,” she tells her, rolling around, pulling the pillow over her ears. “Don’t look at me.” 

Camille doesn’t need to hear how Marian doesn’t love her anymore, even if it’s what she deserves. 

  
  


*

  
  


Camille lives on the edge; she writes her editorial in the gmail drafts before sending it to her editor for proofreading. Someone at work once called her chaotic evil for it, as a joke. Camille laughed, the way you do with friendly coworkers, chortling like it was all good fun; she tucked her hair behind her ear and choked down bile bubbling in her stomach.

BITCH burned down her body, the way it does now, reminding her how unlovable she’s always been, marked from birth.

 _Take your medicine. Swallow. Why can’t you be a good girl?_ Her mother’s voice, always burning in her head. 

Camille hits send and almost closes her laptop, ready to vodka herself to sleep again, when an email pops up; that’s nothing special, she gets emails all the time, but this is from a burner account, the email address a string of meaningless numbers and letters, and Camille knows she shouldn’t open it. Delete it. _C’mon, you know better than this. It’s a virus. It’s going to eat you up._

 **I KNOW WHO YOU ARE** is the subject line. 

Camille clicks. It’s a PDF file. It’s articles...old articles. From before the internet was around, newspaper clippings, archived photos. Scanned and copied and pdf’ed into an email. 

Articles about the Wind Gap Child Murders in the mid 90s. 

Wait, not child murders. Teen Girl murders. Camille didn’t kill girls like Ann Nash or Natalie Keene, on the cusp of puberty. Unlike today’s monster, Camille picked on her girls her own size. But it was more sensational to call them _child murders,_ to talk about what beautiful little angels have been snatched up. Camille remembers sitting and watching her mom watch the news, hand over heart, aghast, like the thought of such ugliness gave her the vapors. _What awful things, I can’t take it._ Every time she said that, Camille fought a smile. 

Camille has tried to forget the girls, put it out of her head, bury them deep in the pit of her heart, where nothing but darkness and Marian lives. 

Betty and Gretchen and Katie and Ellie. One girl for a school year, freshman to senior, like a sacrifice to the gods, for a good harvest, a good year—impulse kills, all in between taking a knife to her own skin, as if that could make up for it. As if she carved enough into herself, she could make up for it.

The email, aside from the PDF file, contains two sentences.

**IS THIS U**

**I wont tell if u don’t ;)**

Camille feels sick—is sick, has been sick for a very long time. 

  
  


*

  
  


Drink. Pass out. Repeat as needed. 

  
  


*

  
  


Camille’s first suspicion is Richard before she dismisses it as ridiculous. 

Her second thought is her mother. But even that is far fetched. That wasn’t Adora’s style. Wink emojis? Textspeak? Does her mother know what emojis are? She certainly doesn’t text.

Her third guess—John Keene? Perhaps? The boy with the sad eyes and soft features and a tear stained face? Some dark part of Camille likes the look of him, all soft vulnerability that she half envied and half hated. 

Maybe he had a dark half too. Maybe he _did_ kill his sister?

Looking at John hurts. Every time she sees him, his sister pops up in her mind’s eye, playing out a horrific daydream. Camille imagines her killing Natalie Keene herself. She doesn’t know why; she’s never pulled out a girl’s teeth. 

Camille jots down _kindred spirit_ in her notebook _,_ and saves it for later. 

Meredith Wheeler, bitchy little gadfly, pops into her head last, all Jackie-O style, and manicured nails, and her pure perfect skin, with just the bite mark on her ear. Her face, her coiffed hair, her half parted gossiping mouth, shows up in her head. 

Camille already feels bad for thinking of her as a _bitch—_ she was supposed to grow out of that mean girl behavior, _we don’t call each other bitches anymore, we don’t fight like that, we’re supposed to support each other_ and all of that—but she can’t help it. Meredith is eighteen and loud as she buzzes around Camille’s ear. Camille thinks of taking a nail file to her throat, of splitting her skull and watching the way the pieces come apart in her hands. 

Camille thinks of the mark on her ear, the missing bit of flesh, that ruins such an otherwise perfect body. She imagines what it’d be like to take it into her mouth and bite down until another piece comes off, her mouth full of blood and cartilage. Better than vodka. 

Just a tiny little intrusive thought. Nothing she’d actually do. 

Anyway. 

Camille still doesn’t know who sent the email. Paranoia makes her angry, makes her cry and weepy, makes her reach for the bottle while HARPY flares up on her body, reminding her who she really is deep down. 

  
  


*

  
  


“Being here makes me feel like a bad person,” she tells her boss.

Calhoun Day is a reminder that she was never good enough for this. Never good enough to be on that stage, or step on her mom’s ivory floor. _Elephants were slaughtered for you, Mama_ , she thinks.

_I slaughtered those girls, Mama._

Camille has cut herself with many things; broken glass, razors, cracked porcelain, needles, butterfly knives, the smashed shards of a light bulb. It was easy to find a sharp object anywhere, if she was really motivated. Being home makes her think of taking any one of those to her mother’s throat. 

Curry reassures her, he says all the right words. _You’re not a bad person, cubby_. But he’s wrong. The longer she’s home, the closer she feels a predator push up against her skin, poking at her insides, as if to say _hello, hello, did you think I was gone_?

_I never left sweetheart; I’m always here._

“Hey,” Amma tells her, putting her hands over Camille’s eyes as she hangs up the phone, playful and smelling of cherry candy. Camille nearly jumps. Amma has a way of pushing into her space and her head and in her thoughts, both literally and metaphorically. Camille did not hear her feet on the floor, a soft, borderline angelic touch. Too delicate to make a sound. 

“Amma, what...”

She trails off as she turns around and gets a closer look at her sister. Amma’s pupils are blown wide open, her cheeks flushed pink red, her gait, swaying a little. Her white dress billows around her as she twirls around. It looks right on her. Made for this. Mama’s perfect do-over angel. 

(for a moment Camille hates her)

“Are you high, Amma?” She asks carefully.

Amma’s mouth drops open in mock faux outrage. “Why, my dear sister Camille, what kind of a question is that?” She asks in an exaggerated southern accent. God knows why. _We’re midwesterners,_ tragically.

“Amma,” Camille says, drawing out her name, liking the way it fits in her mouth, stretching out the vowels.

Amma puts her finger to her mouth. “Sshh,” she says. “I’m not; I’m just bored. Come play with me and I’ll stay sober.” 

Camille shivers. **IS THIS U** pops up in her head, like a bad dream, a sudden sharp memory intruding. Amma, the 5th possibility? She can’t picture her sister pouring over microfiche on a hot summer day in a library when she could be rollerskating. 

If Amma knew about her bloody past, she'd run screaming. Or she should. 

“Don’t tell Mama, okay?” Amma asks, light and breathy. Like an angel, in that Mille Calhoun outfit. Amma leans in, and her breath, warm, gusts across Camille’s lips. Camille closes her eyes for a brief, traitorous second, as she enjoys being this close to her sister. “C’mon, Camille, just us girls.” 

Camille lets out a long exhale. This feels like entrapment, but she doesn’t mind so much. That’s the problem. “What do you want from me, Amma?” 

It’s a loaded question. Amma knows that. She smiles, all teeth, and Camille’s pulse throbs. Her heart is heavy in her chest. _CHERRY_ burns on her body again, like a warning, a signal fire. Amma and cherry lollipops, hand in hand. 

It suddenly occurs to her, looking at Amma’s teeth, her cherry red tongue, her yellow halo hair, that she might be dangerous. The thought sits in her belly like a stone. 

_You're projecting,_ Camille reminds herself. _She's just a little girl._

“Run lines with me, Mille, please,” she says. _Mille_ sticks out in Camille’s head, Marian’s name for her, and no one else. Amma’s voice is sugar sweet when she talks and it makes Camille inappropriately dazed, legs jelly. She takes her hands in hers, like two girls about to play patty-cake. 

They run lines. It’s innocent. Amma is loud and bright and excited, like a day star. But Camille is and always has been a liar. A bad seed. An infection to cut away at. _You have a cold, dark heart, passed down from your father._

  
  


*

  
  


Camille has made a terrible mistake. 

“Do you ever feel,” Amma slurs, in her sleep drunk voice, warm and heavy with heat, “like bad things are going to happen to you? And you can’t stop them? There’s nothing you can do about it? You just have to wait.”

Her little sister is drunk, all loose limbed and hazy-eyed. Camille is drunk as well, but she carries it better, decides her sister is babbling nonsense, drunk spirals that feel truthful when you’re in the thick of it. Amma swayed and tripped all over herself all the way to the bed, grabbing on to Camille’s hands and pulling her down with her, until she ended up nearly on top of her, Camille’s ears burning. 

Camille wanted to tuck her in her own bed, like a good big sister, but Amma ended up in Camille’s room instead, in her bed, limbs sprawled out without any coordination. Amma’s words are coming out in a poetic, honeysuckle voice. Her cheeks are a pretty shade of red, blood filling her skin, flushing her pink, hair sticking to her head. In her tank top and shorts, she looked good enough to eat ( _she looks like the girls Camille’s killed)_. 

Camille should warn her about that.

“Go to sleep, Amma,” she says instead, trying to disentangle herself from her little sister. She places one hand on the mattress, next to Amma’s head, to push herself off the bed. 

“Stay,” is all Amma has to say, reaching out for her, grabbing her by her sleeves. She pulls her down then, _hard_ , surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) aggressive. Camille ends up face down on the spot besides Amma, her face aching, her stomach rolling, like the alcohol may come back. 

“ _Amma,_ ” Camille says, gasping, her breath escaping her in hard puffs. Her voice is a warning, but it feels ineffectual; when she’s this weak, she’s not capable of much.

“Answer me,” Amma says in a girl-like whine. She slides her hand down Camille’s back, small and fragile, her nails dragging down the loose, soft fabric of Camille’s shirt. Then when Amma reaches down where hem meets skin on her body, she slides her hand under Camille’s shirt.

Camille sucks in a sharp breath. 

_Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t touch me,_ Camille wants to say, wants to cry, eyes burning. _Not there._

But Camille can’t make herself move. Amma’s hand feels huge on the small of Camille’s back, burning like a brand. Like the raw sting of a knife, pressed into her skin, burning until blood flows. 

Amma is too drunk to care. Her hand runs over the scars on her back, jagged and haphazard, done with a mirror and a nail file, a letter opener, a needle. Lots of words down here, barely legible. Amma’s fingers trace the T of WET down her spine. Camille fights off a shudder and fails, shaking like a leaf, exposed. 

“Amma, stop—”

“Answer me,” Amma demands, with a soft but firm hand against her scars. “Do you ever feel that way?”

“All the time,” Camille slurs into the pillow. Her body shakes with Amma’s touch. It’s God's honest truth. Adora’s honest truth. Growing up and slaughtering girls and watching her mother bite her baby sister’s cheek and watching Marian choke to death on her own blood and her mother pulling out her own eyelashes and the violence of taking a knife to her skin and cutting deep and—

Violence is everywhere; you just have to look. 

It’s too much. She’s going to throw up. 

Amma, pressing her hand down on her, whispers, “I’m glad it’s not just me.” How can Camille be angry at that? If she goes slack against the bed and lets Amma feel her up, it’s because she’s not really angry, too drunk to sustain that energy. 

Camille’s vision is fading. Amma’s hands are tugging at her shirt now, rolling it up, so her back is exposed. The room is hot, even at night, but the fan is loud in the corner and somehow all Camille can hear is her own heart. 

“Stop,” Camille slurs, into the pillow. “Amma, stop,” she says. At this very moment, it feels imperative Amma not see her scars. Like she wasn’t going to stop there, like she was going to tear her open and pull out her insides and see what she looks like and learn the truth. 

“This is amazing, you’re amazing,” Amma says, ignoring her. Her hands linger on SHAME and Camille pushes her head helplessly into the pillow, shutting her eyes. Amma’s hand is damp with sweat. It leaves a mark on her, however slight. “Why did you do this? Was it fun? Do you like to hurt? Were you mad at Mama?”

Camille has no answer for Amma pulling her apart. None of that. All of that. “I needed to,” she says. “I have to get it out, one way or another.” 

Amma sucks in a breath. “It’s empty here,” she says, rubbing the center of her back, the one place Camille couldn’t reach, pure and untouched. Amma touching her there feels different, _new,_ almost as intense as pressing down on her clit, touching her rawest parts; the shock of it almost pulls Camille out of her drunken state.

“Amma,” she warns, trying to lift her head, but the room spins. Her voice sounds like a moan. It sounds indecent. She is starting to understand why her mother didn’t want her around Amma. She is indecent (WRONG WRONG WRONG) and she’s getting it all over Amma, her pure clean skin, unmarred and unmarked of anything but teenage rebellion. 

“I love this,” Amma says, reverent, and kisses her, too gentle to be real, on the empty clean space of her back. 

Camille moans. Her hands compulsively clench the mattress sheets between her fingers. It feels like love, and she wants more, another soft little kiss, like some wretched, needy thing. 

Amma kisses her again, like she’s reading her mind, mouthing along the empty space there, then slides her hot mouth down to the scars, licking with a heavy tongue along the letters she wrote on herself.

The dark pit of her heart grows wider and wider and wider, a screaming chasm.

. 

*

  
  


Camille wakes up alone. She wakes up shirtless in bed, bra off, and she doesn’t know what happened. 

She doesn’t want to think about what happened. 

The heat burns through her body as an involuntary shudder runs through her, as she stumbles to the adjoining bathroom ( _her mother’s voice drifts in her ears, calling her an uncouth, wild girl, hard to tame, just look at you_ ).

In the bathroom, Camille is wrecked. Dark circles under her eyes and sallow, sunken in skin, hair a mess. She smells vaguely of vomit, tasting something rank at the back of her throat. She doesn’t remember taking her shirt off. 

She thinks Amma removed it, dragging her hand and mouth against the rest of her scars. 

Camille _really_ doesn’t want to think about that, even as _WHORE_ lights up on her body, a sharp reminder, but even that’s not the right word for what she’s done, what she’s allowed to do. Camille has carved her self-loathing and self-hatred onto herself many times over, but _incest_ was never a word she used on herself. Maybe she should have. Maybe there is room for sister fucker. 

Camille turns around to look at her back in the mirror, trying to see if Amma decided to mark her up for herself. The space is still bare. But Camille feels no sense of relief. 

She sighs, and turns back around, to find Amma there, standing in the doorway, watching her. 

“Amma!” Camille shouts, because she’s still _naked,_ or topless in any case, breasts exposed, far more exposed than she was at the dress shop. Camille covers up, folding her arms over her breasts, hiding from Amma. “Get out!” 

Amma giggles. She doesn’t listen. Amma is dressed in a floral nightgown, down far past her knees; she looks a Victorian consumption victim, both too old and too young to be wearing that. She looks like...Marian, ghostly and wane. It’s the hangover, Camille reasons, but her skin itches. 

“Camille,” she says, running into her and awkwardly fitting herself against Camille’s folded up arms; instinctively, Camille moves to give her a hug, but stops herself when she realizes that’d mean exposing herself further. This is already beyond inappropriate. Amma, regardless of Camille’s hesitancy, buries herself against her, pressing Camille’s overheated skin to Amma’s wool nightgown.

“Amma,” Camille starts; her hands don’t know what to do. Push her away or pull her closer? “Amma, can you give me a minute, I’m—”

Amma kisses her. And everything happens very quickly after that. 

Camille gasps, takes in a sharp breath; Amma takes the moment to slip her tongue inside her. Camille drops her arms and later, she will not know if it’s because of the shock of her mouth against hers lowered her guard, or because she tratiously wanted Amma closer. In any case: 

Camille lets her sister kiss her. She tastes like sweet iced tea, overpowering and cloying sweet. She tastes like something bad for her, and Camille wants it so much.

“Amma,” she moans into her mouth, all slick and girl-like and warm. “Amma, you can’t,” she protests. 

This should bother her more. She has thought of Amma before, touched herself thinking about her, and the way she crawls under her skin, but something is wrong, off-kilter, like she’s crashing a train car, like she’s still drunk, still asleep, spinning high and around in dreamland. 

“Amma,” Camille tries again, and Amma bites her, hard, down on her bottom lip. Camille tastes copper bloom across her taste buds. Amma draws blood. 

Camille gasps and shoves her away. 

Amma stumbles back, but she’s laughing, mock pouting. Her teeth are red. Camille didn’t realize her teeth were so sharp.

“Aw, Mille, I was just playing,” she says, grinning. It’s wrong, looking at her like this—little girl doll outfit, little girl doll body. Sharp teeth. 

Something clicks.

“Amma,” Camille gasps out. Her voice is shot. It sounds like a rumble. “Did you kill those girls?”

 _Don’t ask that,_ she tells herself. _What are you thinking? No one in their right mind would answer that question honestly._

Camille eyes Amma with a blank, confused expression and before she can take it back—

“Yes,” Amma says. She grins, wide, no fear of confession. Not with her. Camille understands that. Amma’s eyes are wild-eyed bright, higher than a galaxy and so dark and full of stars. She wants Camille to know. 

Amma is not in her right mind. It’s foolish that Camille _just_ realized this.

(no girl who lives with Adora would ever be in their right mind)

“Did you?” Amma asks, mouth upturned cutely, like this is a game. And for all Camille knows, maybe it is a game. 

“Did I what?” Camille asks. Her heart is so loud in her chest, she’s sure Amma can hear it as well. Camille’s brain is still thinking about Amma murdering little girls, struggling with the brutal vicious images in her head; Amma holding Natalie Keene down. Amma choking the life from them. Amma pulling their teeth out. It all comes down to teeth.

Amma’s mouth twists. 

“The email, ‘Mille,” she says, pouting her exaggerated baby doll lips. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”

Camille blinks. Her heart is pounding very hard now. She is starting to see that everything about Amma is just another layer of performance. Russian nesting dolls of lies upon lies. Mama’s little doll. Mama’s good girl. Rollerskate Blondie. 

“That wasn’t me,” Camille breathes, and even that sounds like an admission of guilt. 

Amma doesn’t say anything. She grins at her. 

In the distance, Camille hears Adora, cry out, looking for Amma, and Camille’s heart throbs in her chest— _go back to your room. Mama is looking for you._

_If Mama finds us here like this, we may both die._

Camille shakes that off. 

“I’m not a serial killer,” Camille breathes, as if she could will that to be true. Serial killers don’t stop, and she stopped. 

In a flash, she reaches out, exposing herself and starts shoving Amma out of the bathroom. 

Amma’s mouth twists, grows wider and wider, displaying all her teeth. 

“Really?” She asks. She stretches out the word, draws out all the syllabus, until it’s distorted, until it doesn’t sound like a real word anymore. “That sounds like something a serial killer would say.” 

“I’m not,” Camille protests. “I haven’t killed anyone in over a decade.” 

The door slams shut, but Amma’s eyes, bright and hopeful, stay with her. 

  
  


*

  
  


Amma is sick for a few days.

( _mama is punishing me_ , Amma texts on her burner, with a red face emoji; _4 drinking. dw i didnt tell her abt u)_

Small comforts.

Camille tries to help but Adora snatches Amma’s medicines and food tray from her whenever she tries to take anything to her. _I don’t need both my girls sick,_ she says, in clipped tones, _stay out of her room_. Camille is just surprised to find herself referred to as Adora’s girl. Is this what it’s like to live in the light? 

A lot of things happen in those days. The blue. The medicine. Marian. Jackie’s files. John Keene, who wants to fuck her, but Amma can’t let that happen. Richard, who also wants to fuck her, but Camille can't stand to let him see her even in the dark. He smells like heavy musk and cologne and Camille thinks of Amma’s mouth, and girls with missing teeth. 

A lot of questions drift in her brain. _Why_?

But also:

_I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry I left you here with Mama and you turned into me._

A few days into Amma’s “sickness,” Camille gets an email.

_Pls show me._

_I promise I won’t tell._

_I’ll tell you everything._

  
  


*

  
  


Camille drifts in Amma’s room in the middle of the night, sneaking around like she’s fourteen again. Living in the same house as her mother makes her feel like she never left, falling back in old habits, shrinking and shrinking, like she’s a ghost, same as Marian. 

The door creaks as it opens and Camille hesitates, knowing there’s a line she’s crossing here. She should turn back, she should do a lot of emotionally healthy things she doesn’t know how to accomplish but—

“‘Mille?” Amma’s voice is plaintive in the darkness. Camille steps in, shutting the door behind her. 

Amma looks out of it. Ill. Vulnerable. SICK throbs on her spine, the letters haphazard and crooked, not as neat as the lines on her arm or stomach, not like FIX or even FUCK U. Amma makes her burn and throb and ache and think awful thoughts about little girls like her. 

Camille walks over, sitting on the edge of the bed, and strokes her sweat damp hair behind her neck. “Why do you let her do this? You don’t have to let her; I never did.”

The real question is, _you already have Mama’s love. Why murder_? 

Amma, eyes bleary, but delighted, looks up at her and smiles. “Maybe I won’t have to anymore.”

With more strength than she thought a sickly Amma had, she tugs Camille down by her shirt, lowering her to her level, and presses a wet kiss to her lips. 

This time, Camille is smart enough to push her down, and hold her against the bed. Amma wriggles under her and it’s—dare she say it? _Cute_. That’s bad. She shouldn’t think she’s cute. She knows she’s not. She tore those girl’s teeth out. 

_Amma is like this because of you_ , her mind whispers. 

The image of little Natalie Keene, mouth gaping wide in a toothless chasm, pops in her head as she stares down at her sister.

“Amma,” she warns. “I”m not one of your playthings. I am not one of your little rollerskater friends.”

Amma giggles. Her eyes are hazy and fever bright, with dark circles under them. There’s a redness to them that alarms Camille. She is not all there. She looks like a ghost, all of them, here in these sheets. 

“I never said you were,” Amma says and she presses a palm to Camille’s belly, snake-quick, slipping under her shirt. Amma’s nails dig in, nails like a warning. All of Camille’s scars, under her fingers. 

Camille tries not to cry.

“Are you going to hurt me?” Amma asks, as she traces the _FUCK U_ on her belly. She looks up at Camille and licks her lips, hungry. “Do you want to hurt me?”

“Yes,” Camille admits, like a monster. _Yes yes._

Amma smiles. She doesn’t take her palm away. She pushes it far down, past the elastic of Camille’s pants, and presses her fingers down on her underwear.

“Don’t—” Camille starts to say, but she can’t help it, she gasps and pulls her hands away from Amma like she’s been burned and moans when Amma digs her fingers into the cleft of her underwear, pressing down like she’s searching.

“You’re damp,” Amma gasps out, “you like this, oh god, I knew you would be, I _knew it,_ I knew you’d like this.”

Camille is supposed to say _stop_ here, but she doesn’t. The words don’t leave her mouth. Her fingers press in against the damp cloth of her underwear—soft fingers, small hand, nothing like a man—and yet far more intense than any other touch. “ _Amma_ ,” Camille moans. 

“We can hurt together,” Amma says like a promise. She then curiously pokes a finger past Camille’s underwear, just one, pressing against overheated skin and the curls of her pubic hair, trying to find her cunt. 

Camille lets out a soft, needy moan. This place on her body is untouched by Camille’s knives. It’s pure, like Amma’s skin. Camille’s skin lights up. All the words on her body light up, loud and bright, from Amma’s touch. She can feel her body responding, leaning into Amma, like two points on a map, like magnets finding each other. 

Camille makes a noise like a sob, and it’s that, that feeling of nearly being broken open, that drives her away. She grabs Amma’s hand and pulls it out of her underwear, and then flings herself away from Amma, like she’s been burned. 

“Go to sleep, Amma, you’re sick,” she says, heading out the door. She winces at her word choice; she meant _ill,_ but they are both sick, deep down. “Take a fucking nap. I’ll take one too.”

Amma, still feverish and tired, sits up, getting closer, her eyes sharp as daggers, tilting her head back as she looks at Camille. 

“You don’t shave,” she gasps, wrinkling her nose. She punctuates her question with a curl of her fingers in her hair, twirling it around between her index and middle. It makes her look cute. Shirley Temple. It makes Camille sick. She doesn’t think she’s done anything like this before. “Why?”

“There’s no need,” she says, not able to get her head on straight. “I don’t get close.” Like Mama said. She was right. “And what, you do? You’re too young for that, Amma.”

Amma smiles, wide, and wide and wider, until Camille feels herself slipping away. Camille throbs where she touched her. 

“I’m not too young for you; we’re blood.”

  
  


*

  
  


The next day, Amma sits next to her at breakfast. 

Camille is typing up her article, ignoring Adora’s disapproving stare, ignoring Amma’s hungry gaze. She has a deadline and a kid in prison who doesn’t belong there, especially now that she knows the killer is sitting right next to her. 

Amma brushes her foot against hers under the table. It takes all of Camille’s willpower to not respond to it. She manages to bite her lip, where Amma bit her the other day, to hold back any noise.

She arches an eyebrow instead. “What are you doing?” She asks carefully.

Adora’s eyes dart between the two of them. Camille imagines, for a moment, that she knows about Amma kissing her; that she knows Camille kissed back. That she knows Amma murdered those girls. 

“Amma, go back to bed, I’ll give you some more medicine,” Adora says. “You’re still recovering, you need rest.”

Amma pouts. Camille stares at the healthy color in her skin and feels sick, uneasy. It’s awfully familiar. 

“I’m feeling better,” Amma says. “Don’t make me go back to bed.” 

Adora makes Amma go back to bed anyway but before she does, she wraps Camille in a hug, startling the air out of her. Before she pulls away, she whispers, “Show me where you did it. Please.” 

  
  


*

  
  


Camille can’t seem to stop making one terrible decision after another. It’s a little like playing with fire, lighting a match as a kid and waving her hand over the flame, waiting to inevitably get burned. It’s like holding a knife to her skin and telling herself, _I’m just seeing what it feels like._ Risk seeking behavior. Camille knows that’s not why anyone flirts with danger. 

“Holy shit,” Amma’s gasp is joyful when Camille takes her to the small hunting cabin in the woods. She lets out a rolling purr of laughter erupting from her belly to her throat to her mouth. “This is _your_ hunting cabin?” She sounds like a kid, who found the witches in the fairytale forest. Gretel to Camille’s Hansel. Or is Camille the witch? The woman in white in the woods? Or is it Adora? Have they all been murdering children?

“No,” Camille says. “Don’t you know this place?” It’s local legend. Camille had a hand in it. 

Amma asked to see her killing floor with a softly spoken angelic _please,_ and Camille remembers Betty had said _please_ too _,_ on a ragged death rattle, a gasp of a last word before she could no longer speak; it took her a little while to die after that. Camille is cold and numb to please, but Amma makes her feel alive. Amma, she wants to please, if only to make up for being a monster. 

“It's not mine,” Camille explains. It belongs to all of Wind Gap, it's dirty little secrets. The cabin is filthy, but not the kind of filth that comes from nature overgrowing and overtaking it. People have been here, using it for whatever reason they could—animals, and people. Pigs and little girls. “People just come here and go.” 

Camille wonders what the walls of this cabin have seen, how many people and animals have died, how much meat.

The other day, she brought Richard out here in the woods, cabin not five feet away. Camille thought of the hardcore porn she’d found in the cabin once, the young barely legal woman with cocks stuffed down their throats, their cunts, their asses, stretched out and crying, nothing but meat. Camille thought of the girl she killed here, petting her soft hair afterwards, and how much she savored the blood splashing on her face, cherry red. 

Inside, Amma bounces around in the cabin, her energy too bright and happy for such a dark place. 

“Is this yours?” Amma squeals in loud delight, the way teenage girls will scream for anything, everything exciting them. Amma is staring at the porn, pointing and laughing, still adoring the wall like a playboy office. 

“That’s not mine,” Camille says and feels a sharp flash of shame. She moves to stand in front of the porn, blocking Amma’s view of it. 

“You’re too young for that,” she says and Amma barks a laugh. The noise she makes is mean, just like the curve of her mouth. 

“I’ve been here before you know,” she says, “I never killed anyone here, but—”

She stops, and takes a deep breath, grinning wide.

“I knew it,” Amma says, eyes glittering, as she leans in and plants a kiss on Camille’s lips. “I knew you were like me.” 

Camille shudders. She doesn’t kiss her back, but she doesn’t pull away either, just stuck in this middle, holding pattern. Amma is small and light. It’s hard to picture her as a murderer. 

“Who did you kill, Amma...how long?”

Amma laughs, and does a little twirl with her feet. She is so delighted to be seen, for once. “You know who! The whole town is riled up about it.” 

Not anymore. John Keene is in jail. If Camille were a better person, she’d go to the police, but she’s not, hasn’t been in a while. 

Amma answers her every question. She tells her about Ann and Natalie and how betrayed she felt, when Mama betrayed their special relationship to them. How dare Mama try to tame them. Ann _bit_ Mama. Amma has never been allowed to do that. 

Camille takes it in; she’s never been allowed to bite Mama either. Camille has pushed her away and tossed Mama’s medicine out of her hands, stomped off, kicked and screamed. She was the unruly monster to Marian’s perfect angel. Adora, trying hard to tame these girls, to make them good, well-behaved little girls. To succeed where she could not with Camille. 

Camille has never thought of that. Oh, she knew she was a failure, but Amma was the do-over. Was Amma not enough? Was Camille not enough? 

Amma slinks up to her, pushing against her body, pressing Camille against the wooden walls of the hunting cabin. She smells like sweat and musk. 

“‘Mille,” she asks. Her body is trembling. “Did you ever get turned on, while killing?”

Camille sucks in a breath. “Amma, you can’t talk about that,” she says and it feels so terribly inadequate. Amma laughs at her. “Oh, so you did!” She grins, her cheeks flushed. Camille thinks of how soft her skin is—not marked up and abrasive like her own. Camille is a roadmap of pain. Amma is pure as driven snow, even if it’s only on the outside. Camille longs to touch it. 

“I get so wet, it’s like everything inside me is on fire.” 

“ _Amma,_ ” she says. She thinks of Ann Nash and her small broken body, strangled. Thinks of how her friends held Natalie Keene down and how Amma must have screamed and snarled and as she murdered her, then still enraged enough to pull out her teeth, bit by bit. Thinks of Amma, high on the kill, hand in her cunt all furious and aroused like never before. 

Camille jerks away and starts walking off. “I have an article to write,” she says. 

“Why don’t you kill anymore?” Amma asks, head cocked. “Did it get boring?”

“I grew up,” Camille spits out, exiting the cabin, the summer daylight harsh in her eyes. Her stomach is churning. Is this an attack of conscience? It’s not as if she’s any better (but she never did kill a twelve year old). 

Amma sighs behind her. “Growing up sucks,” she says, and then Camille realizes she’s following her. Of course she is; Camille can’t very well leave her baby sister in a hunting cabin of depravity.

“Take me home with you?” Amma asks. Hopeful and girlish, the killer inside her gone. She puts an arm around Camille and buries her face in her shoulder. “Please, I wanna be with you.”

Camille doesn’t know what to do with that. 

“Mama will never let you,” she says, and for some reason, this makes her laugh obscenely. “I’m a bad influence.” 

  
  


*

  
  


Camille finishes her article. It’s not a satisfying story. John Keene is in jail; he says he’s innocent and well—

Camille knows the truth. But she won’t turn her sister in. She can’t do that to Amma. 

Just as she’s sending it to her editor, she gets another email, this time, from the same unknown person as the last burner account email she received. 

But Camille knows who now. There’s a screenshot of the hunting cabin attached to the message, uploaded from an iphone. 

**I HAVE SMTH**

**COME SEE**

  
  


*

  
  


There’s a lot of horrible things Camille expected upon walking in—Richard, ready to arrest her. Adora, scolding her. Another dead child. Impossibly, Ann or Natalie.

Instead, Meredith Wheeler is tied up in the hunting cabin, on the flat top table where animals are skinned and butchered. Her eyes are wide open enough that the whites are showing and her perfectly done hair is a mess; chunks of it appear to have been torn out. Her cries of fear are muffled behind a gag, coming out like soft plaintive whimpers, and she’s tied up, hands painfully pulled behind her back with a jump rope. Despite that, she is not struggling as much as she should. Her body is sluggish and slow and Camille thinks she’s been drugged. 

The moment Camille walks in, her eyes immediately find Amma, standing over her, a clean knife in her hand.

“Amma,” she asks. Horror sinks in her belly. She doesn’t know how they’re getting out of this. “What have you done?”

“She’s for you,” Amma insists. “I don’t normally do it like this, but this is what you did right? Take them to the cabin and kill?”

_No._

“Amma,” Camille says, trying to be reasonable. There is no reason to be found. She takes a step closer and avoids looking at Meredith. Camille can sense her fear. “You can’t do this,” she protests. 

Even as she says it, it sounds stupid. 

“Why not? You like to hurt too, right?”

In Camille’s head, Betty and Gretchen and Marian and all the dead girls she knew and loved and hated are here, watching her, waiting. 

“I’m leaving,” Camille says, out of breath, turns around to walk away. It’s cowardly. Amma can have her kills, and Camille—

“No!” 

Amma screams like a banshee— _calm down, someone will hear_ —and rushes at her from behind, shoving her against the wall. Camille topples down from the sheer sudden force of Amma barreling into her, regardless of how small she is. She ends up slumped on the floor, and somehow, Amma ends up sitting on top of her, knife in her hand, dangerously close to Camille’s wrists. 

SISTER flares up on her body, words lighting up one by one. She carved that for Marian. It was never meant for Amma. 

“Stop it,” she tells her, gasping out her name, trying to push her back. It’s a plea. “Don’t make me do this. I don’t want to be like this anymore.”

Amma kisses her then, hard and bruising, mashing their lips together. Their teeth clink against each other. It _hurts._ There’s nothing tender or sisterly about the kiss, just two violent mouths clashing. The knife edges close against the skin of Camille’s wrists, pressing in, not enough to cut but enough to feel the familiar teeth. 

“I think you do,” Amma snarls as she pulls away. She grabs Camille’s hair in one hand, twirling it around in her fingers, as if to admire the color, then sharply tugs several strands loose. Camille winces, but she’s used to pain. 

“I think we’re the same. I think we belong together.” 

Camille pushes Amma away. She stumbles back with a look of _rage_ on her small face. They might just kill each other. 

“We can’t,” Camille says. “We’re not the same.” 

“We _are_ ,” Amma says, with absolute certainty. “I think you left me alone with Mama, and now you feel guilty that we’re both like this. Am I wrong?” 

Camille doesn’t answer. She picks herself back up. There’s dirt and grime on her palms. In the corner of her eye, Meredith is edging closer and closer off the table. Her eyes are looking at Camille with terror. 

“Please,” Amma says. She’s breathing hard, heavy. Her cheeks are flushed. Amma puts a knife in her hand and Camille wants to let it drop from her palm but she finds her fingers closing around it. “Please,” Amma says, “we’re supposed to be sisters.” 

Camille’s hand tightens on the knife. For a minute, she thinks, _I could kill Amma._

Cut her sister’s pretty throat, cover herself in her blood. And then they’ll really be together. Amma will follow her around forever, her second favorite dead girl. 

Amma would hate that, being second best. 

Camille shakes her head. “No—”

Meredith interrupts them, making a screeching noise behind her gag. She has wriggled her legs off the table, awkwardly trying to stand up, fumbling around and struggling. The drugs are wearing off. 

“See?” Amma says, spinning around to glare at Meredith with contempt. “Now you have to kill her. Can’t let her go running around flapping her mouth about us.” 

“I don’t have to do anything,” Camille says.

But Amma is right. There’s no way Meredith leaves this room, not after what she’s heard. Not after what she’s _seen,_ Adora’s two girls kissing like they’re trying to kill each other with their mouths. It’s too late for anything. It’s only a matter of who kills her, Amma or Camille.

Camille should stop deferring her sins on Amma. 

Her hand tightens around the knife. It’s familiar, of course; hurt or hurt others, she’s used to it. 

Something happens when Camille makes the decision to kill Meredith; time floats by beside her slowly, looking at the world through some delirious, blurry haze. Camille ends up standing over Meredith, shoving her back down on the table, knife in hand; she’s not sure she even remembers walking over to her, putting her in this position. Meredith doesn't feel quite real as Camille looks down on her. Even staring at her eyes, her tears, her face, Camille’s eyes are drawn to her bitten down ear, how oddly right it is to kill the girl who got bitten, just like Adora. 

Meredith squeals behind the gag. Amma tells her to shut up. “This isn’t about you.”

It really wasn’t. 

Amma’s hand is on Camille’s wrist, small, but tight. Together, they drive the knife into Meredith’s stomach—then Camille does it again, and again. It’s easy to stab her once she does it the first time and each and every other time, the knife goes in like hot butter, Meredith screaming futilely behind the gag. Every word on Camille’s body is on fire. It’s better than drinking. It's better than hurting herself. 

It takes a while for her to die.

Things get weird at that point. Amma’s hand is burning on hers and when Amma kisses her, Camille stops fighting. She opens her mouth to her sister, drops the knife and grabs her hard by the face as she kisses her, jaw beneath her fingers, smearing blood all over. 

Amma breaks the kiss, panting heavily. She smells, as Adora would say, ripe. 

“You look good like that,” Camille says, a low laugh bubbling in her chest. She’s seventeen again and high on murder and Amma might be the only person that understands that, teenager or not. 

Amma absolutely beams. She turns around then; Meredith is barely breathing when Amma reaches into her exposed insides and comes back with a hand wet and red with blood. 

“Amma...” Camille starts and Amma shoves her hand in her mouth. It startles her, enough that she steps away suddenly, taking a step back. Camille ends up with blood in her mouth and on her lips and chin, much to Amma’s giggly delight. 

“That’s sick,” Camille says; she can taste blood on her tongue, dripping into her mouth. “What are you, finger painting?” 

“I like it,” Amma says, eyeing her up and down. “I like you covered in her blood,” she says and launches herself at her yet again. 

In the dirty little backwoods cabin, Camille pushes Meredith off the hunting table, her body landing with a plop, finally dead. She lays Amma down on it then, tearing off her baby doll clothes, fascinated by the wide expanse of smooth, smooth skin all over her body, no marks, no scars, just pale softness. Camille runs her hand down her chest, cupping her tits, savoring the way Amma gasps as she touches the sensitive parts of her body. She slides her hand down her stomach, then over her hips and finally, tugging off her skirt to get at her thighs. 

Neither of them are clean. Blood is going everywhere. Camille is going to need to get them both tested. 

“You’re beautiful,” she says and feels a sob choke in her throat, thinking of her own ruined body. 

Amma runs her hands down her ribs, her sides, making Camille shiver. “Let me see,” she says, tugging at her shirt, pulling it up Camille’s body. Camille raises her hands to help and it’s suddenly cold in the hunting cabin, raw and exposed. Camille wants to cover up. 

Her face is still covered in blood. Her hands are still covered in blood. Her shirt is covered in blood. Everything is ruined. 

“I wanna,” Amma says, going for her bra, but Camille shoves her back on the table. 

“Not now, Amma,” Camille says sharply, digging her nails into her shoulders until Amma gasps. 

“‘Mille,” she says.

Camille takes her underwear off, sliding it off her legs, leaving it down by her ankles. “I said not now,” she repeats and then presses her fingers against Amma’s warm cunt, savoring the keening noise she makes. She doesn’t think she’s heard Amma sound like that before. 

Her fingers are wet with blood and Amma’s fluids as she slides two into her cunt. She clenches tightly around her, whining deep in her throat. Camille doesn’t know where to look—at the way her cunt sucks her fingers in like they belong inside her, at her tits, at the bloody handprints all over her body. CHERRY throbs on her inner thigh. A pair of popped cherries, the two of them, bound on a single stem. 

“Have you done this before?”

Amma smirks; she’d look more smug if she weren’t so debauched. “I’m not a virgin. Did you want me to be?”

Camille shakes her head. “I wasn’t a virgin at your age either,” she replies and lowers her head down to her warm cunt. 

Camille eats out her sister in a hunting cabin in the woods, a dead body next to them, Amma gasping and moaning _sister_ and _mine,_ her clutching Camille’s hair and shoulders tightly, pressing her cunt into her face. Camille eats out her sister and forgets about everything else. 

  
  


*

  
  


Later. After. In the cabin. The sun has gone down. The body is starting to ripen in the hot summer. Poor Meredith Wheeler. 

“Amma,” Camille tells her. Her voice is hoarse, her jaw sore. “We have to remove her teeth.”

“What?” Amma asks. She has blood stains on her teeth. She is stretched out like a lazy kitten on the table. “Why?”

“To make it look the killer is still at large,” she says, getting off Amma, throwing her clothes back on. “C’mon,” she tells her.

“Ugh,” Amma says, complaining, but getting up. “Fine. I could use more teeth.”

  
  


*

In a bathtub, the two of them sit naked, resting opposite from each other. Camille cannot get enough of Amma’s naked body. She doesn’t want to stare, but she loves looking at it. 

Amma stares at her with wide eyes, taking her in as well. It’s like they’re seeing each other for the first time. 

Camille feels not hungover, exactly. Not the dull throbbing headache of a hangover, or the guilt and regret that comes with drinking too much. She feels, if anything, far more alive. Buzzing. Her insides were swimming and swirling and alight with life. Like she could do anything. Like she could do something worse. Like she and Amma could just spin out forever and ever and ever. 

More people were going to die, Camille knew that. Sometimes, she can feel it, when bad things are going to happen, and you just have to let them. 

“Let me come with you,” Amma says as they get out of the tub. Her eyes are so adoring, she almost looks innocent. “Please.”

“Mama will never let you come home with me,” Camille tells her with a soft sigh. She thinks of staying in Wind Gap, but they would both suffocate here. She thinks of kidnapping Amma, and running away, changing their names, and never letting anyone find them, killing pretty hitchhiking girls by the side of the road. It’s a nice fantasy. 

“Make her.”

  
  


*

  
  


The thing about murder is that it’s easy. It's like riding a bike. Camille never forgot how to do it, and one murder simply leads to another, and another, falling down like dominoes. It's important to know what you're capable of. Amma should understand that. 

“Mama?” Camille calls out, keeping her voice soft and low, childlike, the way it never really was with them. In one hand, she has her mother’s finest brandy. Not Camille’s cheap dime store vodka. She pulled it from her mother’s finest stash, the kind she used to sneak when she was a teenager to get herself fucked up. 

She looks at the threshold of her mother’s room, remembering all the time she’s been told to stay out of it. She crosses over, stepping on the elephant ivory tile. Her boots track mud but it’s not going to matter much for long. 

Adora is laying on the bed in dramatic repose, wearing soft silky pale yellow nightgown. Alan isn’t here; she wonders how often they sleep in the same bed. She wonders if her cold heart came from her father or Adora. 

“Camille, please,” her mother says, with that tone of voice, that dragged out the words long and slow. Like she doesn’t expect much from her, of course Camille would overstep and come bother her. “It’s late. Surely, this can wait. Did I tell you to come into my room?”

The sharpness would be cutting any other time but for the moment, Camille is at a loss. Camille stares at her mom, taking her in, asking herself, _is she really going to do this?_ There’s a lot she wants to say, but _I could never love you_ repeats over and over in her head from their last, real honest conversation, and there’s really only one thing Camille wants to say. 

“I’m going to take care of Amma now,” she says, “she loves me, you know. Unlike some people.” 

Her mother is awake now, eyes wide open. She laughs. It’s a sharp, nasty sound. “Camille, that’s nonsense. You couldn’t take care of Amma, she’s so difficult. You don’t have the strength, she’s not fit for your city lifestyle.” She pauses, clearly struggling to find the words. "She doesn't know any better."

It's a low blow but Camille doesn't feel it anymore.

“I know, Mama,” Camille says, “I know she’s difficult. That’s what I like about her.” 

Camille pours the brandy on her mother’s nightgown. Adora squeals like a pig. 

“What are you doing?” She gasps out, staring at Camille in shock. Camille doesn’t think this is that surprising. She knocked out glasses of wine out of her mom’s hands before, the blue medicine, all sorts of things. She was always a nasty, unlovable child. 

In her other hand, Camille has her lighter, from when she used to smoke, that she never quite let go. Camille was careful not to get any alcohol on her. 

She lights it up. “Goodbye, Mama,” she says. “I loved you.” 

She drops the lighter and watches her mother go up in flames. 

  
  


*

The house burns down. That’s for the best. Camille never wants to see it again.

She drags Amma out of bed, wrapping in her a blanket. Amma is sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes, yawning. For a moment, she is just a little girl. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Camille says. “House is burning down.” 

Camille doesn’t go back for anything else. Her laptop is insured and the article has been mailed to her editor. She does not go back for Alan, asleep in his room, choking on smoke, but she wakes Gayla up on the way out, down on the first floor, and Gayla helps her carry out Amma. 

It’s all very chaotic afterwards. She tells the cops she doesn’t know what’s going on, only that she heard her mother calling out and went to find her, already on fire, already too late. Camille is good at looking stunned, her face pale, her eyes wet and soft, choking back tears. Camille is good at the thousand yard stare; she’s worn it many times. Everyone’s emotions are high and Camille has to stay strong for her baby sister, right? 

Amma will not stop sobbing. She sobs for the firemen and the cops and the Sheriff Vickery. It turns out, that’s not faked. She is still sobbing when they are alone. 

“Why would you do that?” She screams at her. She punches Camille in the shoulder, in her chest, over and over and when Camille tries to hug her, she screams louder and kicks her. Camille laughs. It hurts, don’t get her wrong, but it doesn’t matter. That comfortable emptiness is settling in her bones again, not quite a murder high but close enough. She’s untouchable in this moment, rock solid, a reborn diamond. 

Adora is dead. She and Amma have each other. Everything else can burn. 

“It was the only way,” Camille says, trying to keep her voice soothing. “It’s better this way, she would have never let you go. She would have poisoned you until you died in that house.” 

She’s not sure that’s entirely true. 

“I wanted to kill her since I was a teenager,” Camille adds. 

In the interest of honesty.

If they’re all being honest with each other right now. 

No more secrets. 

Amma screams at her. 

Camille lets her. She’ll get over it.

  
  


*

  
  


“I can’t believe you burned my dollhouse,” Amma sneers at her over the kitchen table in her shitty St. Louis apartment.

“We’ll get you another dollhouse,” Camille says, setting down her eggs, sunny side up, next to her waffle. “You can get more teeth for it, even. Cheer up, buttercup.” 

Camille is sober now, these days. It’s easier to just toss away the Evian bottle, her mind and body distracted with other things. Camille wants to think that maybe that counts for something, in the grand scheme of things—sobriety is a good thing, isn’t it? But she knows it doesn’t, not really. 

The St. Louis heat burns down her neck, but the words do not flare up the same way on her skin anymore, except sometimes. Sometimes when Amma runs a hand down her spine, or over her belly (SISTER burns all over, in sharp sudden moments) or sometimes when the knife in her hand shakes a little, only for Amma to reach over and steady it (WRONG reminds her what she’s doing). 

Amma gets restless here in St. Louis, batting her eyes at her. “I wanna go out,” she says. “I’m bored.” Baby doll pout. Lips sticking out, fever bright eyes. The hunger is in her. 

Camille _hmmms._ Truthfully she doesn’t understand the urge, not in the same way—Adora is dead, and Camille’s rage is satisfied. 

But she should know. The urge to hurt doesn’t just go away. It’s a part of you, once you give in. 

“It can't be someone we know,” she tells her, sitting down at the table. She doesn't want to play with Amma, string her along. She is going to be honest with her little sister, as much as she can be. Amma demands honesty. Amma demands devotion. That’s where Adora failed. 

Amma practically vibrates at the kitchen table with excitement, the waffle on her plate going back and forth on the plate as she splits it into two haphazardly with a knife and fork. She pours strawberry syrup on it, drenching it until it can’t taste like anything but chemicals and sugary sweet glomp. Camille winces. 

A good parent would tell her to stop but Camille is not a good parent, or a good guardian or a very good sister. 

She's not their mother, most of all. 

“What's the point then?” Amma asks. Amma is firecracker furious. She wonders if that's the difference between them, the fury between them. It’s so sharp and new in Amma and Camille has dulled it for so long. 

“To not get caught,” Camille says drly, sipping her morning coffee. It’s bitter. “This isn’t Wind Gap. People won’t look the other way.”

“It’s bigger,” Amma huffs, like she understands how things work. “No one will care if some girl goes missing.” 

Camille lets out a sigh and rubs her hands into her eyes, until she sees spots in a sea of dark. She wonders, idly, if Amma will kill her one day. 

“Pick someone out,” she tells her, trying to change the subject. “No one in this building. You can hurt anyone you’d like, as long as it doesn’t come back to us.”

“Can I hurt you?” Amma asks, grabbing a butter knife and pressing it against the skin of Camille’s hand, her bare knuckles. Unclaimed skin. Uncharted territory. It’s a butter knife. That’ll hurt, for sure, to press down hard enough to really hurt. To break skin. To bleed everywhere. It’ll take a lot of force. 

Camille licks her lips. 

“Sure, Amma,” she says, insides burning, every bit of scar tissue aching hard on her body. “If you want.” 

Amma smiles, sweet and cherry-red, and presses the knife down. 


End file.
